Perhaps the line of rain showers currently making their way through the area will help the firefighters get some control of the situation. I certainly hope so.
As for the DNR...their main focus these days seems to be how to "manage" the State's forrests as a cash-cow to bail out the financial drain of the poorly run Blue counties of SE Michigan.
A ride through any State forrest today reveals the full extent of the clear-cutting campaign underway...
While they used to leave a narrow strip of un-cut forrest along the roads to hide or disguise the extent of the cutting from the flatlanders and fudgies heading north to their summer cottages, nowadays all they leave standing is a small handfull of immature and/or commercially worthless tree species...1-5 trees per acre is not my idea of a forrest.
They don't even leave the slash behind anymore. It all gets chipped and hauled away. There is virtually nothing left behind to give cover to the game animals, or to provide nutrients to the poor thin sandy soils.
Michigan's forrests today are starting to resemble what we had when the Lumber-Barons finished with them and moved further west a hundred years ago...stumps and naked blow-sand.
Shameful...
CptA
